Sir Philip Henry Montgomery Campbell is a British astrophysicist. He served as editor-in-chief of the peer reviewed scientific journal Nature from 1995 to 2018. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the publishing company Springer Nature.
Campbell began working at Nature in 1979 and was appointed physical sciences editor in 1982. After leaving the journal in 1988 to start the publication Physics World, the membership magazine of the Institute of Physics, he returned to Nature as Editor-in-Chief in 1995, succeeding John Maddox. In that role, he headed a team of about 90 editorial staff around the world. He took direct editorial responsibility for the content of Nature's editorials, writing some of them. He was the seventh editor-in-chief since the journal was launched in 1869. He was also editor-in-chief of Nature publications. In that role he was responsible for ensuring that the quality and integrity appropriate to the Nature name are maintained, for overseeing editorial policies, and for ensuring that appropriate individuals are appointed as chief editors of Nature journals. He was succeeded by Magdalena Skipper in his role as editor-in-chief in 2018. In the role of Editor-in-Chief of Springer Nature, Campbell is responsible for the oversight of editorial policies and standards across the company, for external engagement, and for stimulating new strands of content across the company's brands and across research disciplines. Campbell has worked on issues relating to science and its impacts in society with the Office of Science and Innovation in the UK, the European Commission and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. For ten years until 2012, he was a trustee of the charity Cancer Research UK and the chairman of the charity's Public Policy Advisory Group. He was a visiting scholar at Rockefeller University in spring 2008. Campbell was appointed a member of an independent panel established in February 2010 by the University of East Anglia to investigate the controversy surrounding the publication of emails sent by staff at the university's Climatic Research Unit. Due to publicity about a 2009 interview with Chinese State Radio during which he expressed support for the CRU scientists, he resigned just hours after the panel was launched. Campbell was a founding member and, from 2015 to 2019, chair of the board of trustees of the research-funding charity. He was a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Mental Health. As well as editing, Campbell has co-authored several publications on science policy and the impact factor.
In January 2010 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3. He married the academic Charis Thompson in 2014.
